O’Fallon school leaders ‘miss kids’ during overnight stay

Nicole Voss appears in court while in custody

WARNING: Graphic surveillance video shows a shooting death. Beer was spilled on his shoes, slurs were used and a murder followed as captured on surveillance video early on Sept. 5, 2015, at the Phillips 66 convenience store on Illinois 3 in Sauget, IL. Prosecutors used this footage showing Lamarc Garrett shooting Oscar C. Carbajal to death.

WARNING: Graphic surveillance video shows a shooting death. Beer was spilled on his shoes, slurs were used and a murder followed as captured on surveillance video early on Sept. 5, 2015, at the Phillips 66 convenience store on Illinois 3 in Sauget, IL. Prosecutors used this footage showing Lamarc Garrett shooting Oscar C. Carbajal to death.

Never miss a local story.

Garrett turned briefly to look at his mother before facing forward again and saying that he had already apologized.

Attorneys on both sides had spent about an hour presenting evidence to Judge Randall Kelley, who is set to retire at the end of February.

Garrett had been convicted Feb. 7 for killing Carbajal, who may have used a racial slur before dropping a case of beer and splashing Garrett's shoes outside a Sauget convenience store in 2015.

Lamarx Garrett

Provided

Prosecutor Steve Sallerson read a victim impact statement from Margarita Sanchez, the wife of Carbajal and mother of his daughter. Sanchez was in court but does not speak English.

"The person wrenched his life from him in cold blood," the letter read. "I spent many evenings waiting for him. The letter said she has struggled with accepting Carbajal's death and struggled financially in keeping her and their daughter, Esperanza, housed and fed.

Karen and Clive Nesbitt, Garrett's parents, spoke on his behalf at the hearing. They each spoke of his long-term mental illness including paranoid schizophrenia, and that the Nesbitt's are raising the youngest of Garrett's three children.

"He was a loving child," Karen Nesbitt said in court. "I have four kids, out of those four kids he's the only one who respects me as a mom."

She said he did not smoke, drink or do drugs.

Related stories from Belleville News-Democrat

"I don't know what possessed him him to ask for a beer," she said, referring to the night the shooting occurred.

The prosecution questioned her testimony because Garrett's six prior felonies included drug possession and drug trafficking charges. Sallerson reminded Nesbitt that as a convicted felon, her son was not to have a gun at all.

"Prior to (the deadly shooting) someone pulled a gun on him and stole his truck and wallet — he's paranoid," she said. "He didn't know what these people were going to do."

She admitted that her son often had a gun nearby because of his paranoia.

Clive Nesbitt testified that his son's drug use, and the downward spiral his life had been on, was over and starting to turn around before the shooting. He said his son had done his prison time and "tried to get his life together."

"If you're gonna bring up his past, why not his?" Clive Nesbitt said of Carbajal. "He's not squeaky clean either."

Carbajal did not have a criminal history in Missouri or in St. Clair or Madison counties, according to online records.